VinylVideo™
Gebhard Sengmüller
Media installation, turntable, conversion box, television
Austria 1998
“For the first time in the history of technological invention, VinylVideo™ makes possible the storage of video (moving image plus sound) on analog long-play records. Playback from the VinylVideo™ picture disk is made possible with the VinylVideo™ Unit which consists of a normal turntable, a special conversion box (aka the VinylVideo™ Home Kit) and a television.
In its combination of analog and digital elements VinylVideo™ is a relic of fake media archeology. At the same time, VinylVideo™ is a vision of new live video mixing possibilities. By simply placing the tone arm at different points on the record, VinylVideo™ makes possible a random access manipulation of the time axis. With the extremely reduced picture and sound quality, a new mode of audio-visual perception evolves. In this way, VinylVideo™ reconstructs a home movie medium as a missing link in the history of recorded moving images while simultaneously encompassing contemporary forms of DJ-ing and VJ-ing” (www.vinylvideo.com).
“Posed as a ‘fake archaeological relic of media technology,’ VinylVideo™ provokes a range of questions around the expectations of ‘a fictitious technological past’ (as Charles Gute suggested), the faux-status of innovation, the ploys (and plots) of advertising, the quotidian benefits of aesthetics, the esteem of media theory, the vacuous virtual venture of investment, and the participation of artist collaborators producing editions of ‘records’.” (Druckery 1999)
Gebhard Sengmüller, born 1967, lives and works in Vienna.
VinylVideo™ is an invention by Gebhard Sengmüller, in cooperation with Martin Diamant, Günter Erhart and Best Before.
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REFERENCES
Timothy Druckery, “Missing Links,” Eikon. International Magazine for Photography and Media Art, no. 29 (1999), p.4.
Gebhard Sengmüller, “Four Media Archaeological Artworks,” in Interface Cultures. Artistic Aspects of Interaction, eds. Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, and Dorothée King (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008), pp. 273–282.
